Prove It: How Racers Give Sponsors a Return They Can Use

Racers often treat ROI as the sponsor's problem. The brand writes the check, the brand runs the numbers, and the racer hopes they come out well. But many of the sponsors I've interviewed at my Sponsorship Summits admit they don't have a reliable way to measure motorsports at all. When that's the case, the return that counts is the one the racer can show them.

That changes the job. A racer who delivers something the sponsor can see, count and show to other people in the company makes the renewal easy to approve. Here's how some of the people on the other side of the table described the returns they can actually use.

Save the sponsor money it was going to spend anyway

Tony Milunzi, senior brand manager at ITW Group, manages the Gumout brand, and his office also handles Rain-X and Black Magic. He was honest about measurement. "I don't have a great way to calculate a return on investment, so it's tough," he said. So he uses a test any racer can understand.

Milunzi doesn't have a separate motorsports budget. Racing competes with everything else in his marketing plan. "If you're able to deliver assets that I then can avoid having to go and create myself, that is one of the easiest ROI allocations," he said, "because it was like, hey, I was gonna spend X grand to do a photo shoot, and now I don't have to do that photo shoot. Well, that's money that I can put somewhere else." His bottom line: "If I can avoid creating content, I'm plus." ▶ Watch Tony Milunzi explain this

That's a return any finance department understands: money the brand didn't have to spend. If your photos, videos and testimonials replace a shoot the brand would otherwise pay for, put a fair estimate of that cost in your recap.

Help your contact look good inside the company

Milunzi added a second point. A racer can make the person who backs him look good to the rest of the company. He has moved away from the traditional name-on-the-car deal toward "leveraging a racer as a content creator, not so much as a sponsored racer," and his advice to racers was to "try to understand the value that you can bring to the brand, not the value the brand brings to you."

He told the story of a racer he worked with at Sick Week who, while getting the car ready, made sure to photograph Black Magic product sitting next to it. Milunzi passed the photo to the Black Magic team as free content for their social media. The racer gave his sponsor something to share with a colleague, and in the process got noticed by a second brand that might sponsor him later. ▶ Watch Tony Milunzi's full session

Put your results where the sponsor sells

Matt Burroughs is senior vice president of corporate finance at Monster Energy, and he's also a SCORE UTV champion who lines up his own sponsors. Describing what his tire sponsor, System 3, gets back, Burroughs listed results the brand could take straight to its customers. "We were able to give them the Baja championships that you spoke of, so they're able to use that in their marketing of their tires," he said. "Number two is System 3 has put up large banners throughout dealerships across the nation of my car."

His car also turned up in Monster's gas station displays, which helped his other sponsors too. "What's been a perk for my other sponsors is I made it to the gas station wrap," he said, and every logo on the car went along with it. "These are the things I like to present the sponsors with, to say this is what I can do for you." ▶ Watch Matt Burroughs explain this

He also admitted a weakness without apology. "I don't have the biggest social media following. It's a weak part of my game, although we're trying to get better, but I really try to give the sponsors an idea of here's what I can do." You don't need to be strong at everything. You need to know which of your results matter to each sponsor and collect the proof.

JR Twedt, president of K1 RaceGear, described the same idea from the brand side, with a number attached. K1 shares its athletes' content with the distributors who sell its gear, and Twedt said his general manager reported "about a 300 percent return on some of those investments with our distribution." K1 uses its athletes, social media, graphics and photography department "to actually manage and utilize and share that information with our distributors as well. We feel that that has got a tremendous amount of value to it." ▶ Watch JR Twedt on value and ROI

A photo of you winning in K1 gear helps K1, but it helps more once a distributor uses it to sell suits. The racer who supplies content in a form distributors and dealers can use is adding to the return K1 measures.

Promise what you'll deliver, then document it

Both men said the pitch should start with the return, not the request. "When I approach a company, it's here's what I can do for you," Burroughs said. "As a racer, I'm going to be able to do X, Y and Z, and here's the things I guarantee I'm going to do. I'm going to be at the races, I'm going to be well branded. We may not win, but over time hopefully are going to be successful." ▶ See the full answer

Twedt doesn't want to start with money at all. "Come to that conversation with value. What is it that you can do for me and I can do for you? I don't care what the dollar amount is, you know, we can figure that out. That's just an equation," he said. "What it really comes down to is what can you produce for me and I can produce for you." ▶ Watch JR Twedt's advice

A list of guarantees is also the outline of your year-end report. If you promised every race, clean branding, a dealer appearance and a set number of videos, the recap is just a record of whether you did each one.

Get a valuation someone else calculated

Racers can also use outside measurement. Matt Martelli, CEO of the Mint 400, said social-media valuation from Hookit changed how his event works with sponsors. "Hookit became an extremely powerful tool for us to change what we were doing, as well as us to share our valuation with our sponsors," he said.

He sees it as a way to help everyone on the event improve. "Our goal is always to elevate the brands that sponsor us and elevate the athletes," Martelli said. "It's the same thing with the athletes. We want to guide them in making better content and having a bigger reach." ▶ Watch Matt Martelli on Hookit

A number calculated by a third party carries more weight in a budget meeting than one you calculated yourself. Combine it with the things only you can document, like dealer banners, store displays, content the brand reused and introductions you made, and your sponsor has a return to show the rest of the company.

The takeaway

• Put a fair cost on the content your sponsor used instead of paying for its own shoot, and include it in your recap.
• Collect proof every time a sponsor uses your results: dealer banners, store displays, ads, catalog shots.
• Give sponsors content they can pass to their distributors, dealers and sister brands, not only content for your own social feed.
• Start every pitch with a written list of what you guarantee to deliver, and build your season report from that list.
• Add an outside valuation where you can, so your numbers don't rely only on your own estimate.